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76
SPRING 2014
Does the idea of swimming at
Cottesloe Beach fill you with
dread? Do you baulk at the
thought of letting your child
climb a tree, or get wet and
cold? Adventure travel expert
Mike Wood says the real hazard
lies in our creeping aversion to
perceived risk – especially when
it comes to kids.
RETURNS
ON RISK
How tough are you, really? And what are the limits
of your physical and mental endurance? How
can you be sure if you are truly at the end of your
tether if you have never been there? The notion
of resilience is endlessly fascinating. During
much of my life I have been tested in the
outdoors, from kayaking expeditions in my teens
to Himalayan climbing and Polar expeditions
in my 40s. With each challenge overcome, new
confidence emerges. So, when the next difficulty
arrives – and it always does – you feel more
capable of meeting it. I’ve watched this important
process play out often among fellow travellers in
remote and challenging places.
But opportunities to test and overcome
our fears are diminishing in our increasingly
comfortable Western lives – and also in adventure
tourism, which is becoming more sanitised and
controlled by the day. How can we expect people
–
especially children – to cope with adversity, to
be resilient, if they have never been tested? How
do we expect them to learn how to prevail if they
have never experienced what it is like to be really
cold or truly tired?
Many people reject adventure activities
because they are ‘too hard’. People tell
me they couldn’t possibly come on one of
my trips because they are a ‘five-star kind of
traveller’. I have always found that with the
greatest risks come the greatest rewards. People
rarely talk about the good days on a trip, except
in general terms; the day they talk about is the
big one, the hard one.
I recently took a group to a remote area in
Nepal called Naar Phu. We had a brilliant trek.
The weather was excellent and we achieved all
the goals we had set ourselves. The area was
remote and there were no other trekkers there,
the views were extraordinary and varied. But the
day we all talk about now, back in Perth, is
the day we crossed the Mesokanta Pass out of
Tilicho Lake in the very middle of the Annapurna
massif, at 5300m, in the middle of a snowstorm.
We were challenged, pushed to the full extent of
our endurance. We were on a slope, in snow up to
our mid-thighs, it was bitterly cold, and a relentless
sleet-bound wind drove hard into our cheeks. We
were well equipped, had excellent jackets and
boots, and we had extremely competent guides
so we were safe and under control. But we could
sense that it wouldn’t take much more for things
to get out of control. We could sense we were at
Zodiac cruising through icebergs
off the Greenland ice cap.